Mr. Chamberlain And I Went In A Kuruma Hurried Along By Three
Liveried Coolies, Through The Three Miles Of Crowded
Streets which
lie between the Legation and Asakusa, once a village, but now
incorporated with this monster city, to the
Broad street leading to
the Adzuma Bridge over the Sumida river, one of the few stone
bridges in Tokiyo, which connects east Tokiyo, an uninteresting
region, containing many canals, storehouses, timber-yards, and
inferior yashikis, with the rest of the city. This street,
marvellously thronged with pedestrians and kurumas, is the terminus
of a number of city "stage lines," and twenty wretched-looking
covered waggons, with still more wretched ponies, were drawn up in
the middle, waiting for passengers. Just there plenty of real
Tokiyo life is to be seen, for near a shrine of popular pilgrimage
there are always numerous places of amusement, innocent and
vicious, and the vicinity of this temple is full of restaurants,
tea-houses, minor theatres, and the resorts of dancing and singing
girls.
A broad-paved avenue, only open to foot passengers, leads from this
street to the grand entrance, a colossal two-storied double-roofed
mon, or gate, painted a rich dull red. On either side of this
avenue are lines of booths - which make a brilliant and lavish
display of their contents - toy-shops, shops for smoking apparatus,
and shops for the sale of ornamental hair-pins predominating.
Nearer the gate are booths for the sale of rosaries for prayer,
sleeve and bosom idols of brass and wood in small shrines, amulet
bags, representations of the jolly-looking Daikoku, the god of
wealth, the most popular of the household gods of Japan, shrines,
memorial tablets, cheap ex votos, sacred bells, candlesticks, and
incense-burners, and all the endless and various articles connected
with Buddhist devotion, public and private. Every day is a
festival-day at Asakusa; the temple is dedicated to the most
popular of the great divinities; it is the most popular of
religious resorts; and whether he be Buddhist, Shintoist, or
Christian, no stranger comes to the capital without making a visit
to its crowded courts or a purchase at its tempting booths. Not to
be an exception, I invested in bouquets of firework flowers, fifty
flowers for 2 sen, or 1d., each of which, as it slowly consumes,
throws off fiery coruscations, shaped like the most beautiful of
snow crystals. I was also tempted by small boxes at 2 sen each,
containing what look like little slips of withered pith, but which,
on being dropped into water, expand into trees and flowers.
Down a paved passage on the right there is an artificial river, not
over clean, with a bridge formed of one curved stone, from which a
flight of steps leads up to a small temple with a magnificent
bronze bell. At the entrance several women were praying. In the
same direction are two fine bronze Buddhas, seated figures, one
with clasped hands, the other holding a lotus, both with "The light
of the world" upon their brows.
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